Sunday, September 04, 2005

I think DFNYC and the Dean groups across the country are in a unique position to reshape the party so it becomes more a party of near permanent power. We have the disadvantage of trying to lead various powerless groups, which makes the idea of unity rather challenging. There is by definition much infighting among the powerless. If they were to unite, they would not be powerless no more. It is a chicken-egg situation. (See: DFNYC Research And Advocacay Group)

The Democratic party is utterly out of power right now. How to get back to power? We have stuck to old ideas on domestic policy. What holds us back more is we have basically given the foreign policy turf over to the opponents.

The way to morph our weakest link into an unchallenged strength would be to embrace the idea of a progressive way to spread democracy all over the world. And I am in a unique position to help, because I am intimately involved with the ongoing movement for democracy in Nepal. Nepal could be the perfect human laboratory for our idea. (See: The Road To The White House Goes Through Nepal)

I am not big on the idea of spending 200 billion dollars, 2000 American lives, and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives to spread democracy in Iraq: I think it is such a waste of life and resources and half the time is self-defeating. But if it is between progressives doing nothing and the neo-cons waging war on Saddam, I am for war. But it does not have to be that way. $100,000 fed to the democracy movement in Nepal could do the trick. And the movement is being documented in near real time online. So we will have a blueprint for elsewhere in the region and the world. (See: Democracy: The Third Wave)

We also have to watch out for the internal dynamics within the progressive movement. There has to be zero tolerance for racism and sexism. The white boys who learned to create glass walls and ceilings during potty training will simply have to unlearn a few things, or there is not going to be much of a progressive movement anymore than there is going to be a neo-con movement.

An average white person freezes when having to discuss race relations, whereas dialogue is the most constructive way to make progress on race relations. Race is the most unresolved issue in American politics. And you don't make progress on race relations by talking about the weather, you make progress by bringing race into the dialogue mainstream. The frozen ones are not members of the progressive movement, or any that I recognize.

I have little time for politics in the first place, and that little time has been going to Nepal. I need to be focusing on my business and blogging career more anyways, and the little time I might make to possibly volunteer sure is not going to be spent cheerleading those who are prone to upholding the glass structures, be it in social or more professional settings.

I spent a few years in Kentucky. The Bible is the only book the white boys there read. And they read it every other day. Read a novel for a change: I recommend The Old Man And The Sea. And I read in a journal article once that Wall Street and Capitol Hill are the two most racist and sexist places on earth. So as far as racism and the urban landscape is concerned, as Michael Corleone would say, "It is nothing personal, Sonny. It is strictly business." There is verbal jujitsu.

And there is the internet. And there is globalization. Racists hurt their bottomline, that is all they do.